bolt in blue

3500 lbs is plenty of tow capacity for me.

I've said it before, but as long as it still has a tow capacity, I'd be all over an Escape ST or RS. My Escape handles better than my Mazda 3, although that's because the suspension is shot in the 3 but the roads are terrible around here, so I don't mind too much for a commuter car. As it currently stands, I only drive the Escape when I have 3+ people in the car, need to haul something, or need to tow something. I'd prefer a Focus wagon with a tow capacity, but especially with a lower ride height for better stability (and gas mileage at the same power), but an Escape ST/RS sounds like a great compromise for the US market. I can confirm that spinning the wheels is fairly easy on a 2.0 FWD Escape. Stock Conti Pro Contact tires don't help either - I get much better performance (including better gas mileage) on my snow tires. Can't wait to get Michelins on the car. Probably next summer at my current rate of driving. Starting to notice wear on the Contis when I changed back to them last weekend. Probably around 30k on them now.

Only phase 1 is opening. When the current work started, phase 1 was supposed to open in 2013. Phases 2 and 3 were already supposed to be under construction. They're now talking about a 2020 start to construction - no funds identified. The real story to me is the cost. It's approaching $1 billion per mile. The excuse is always that New York is an old and complicated city with strong labor protections, but London and Paris are older with similar complications and even stronger labor protections, yet they build for under $100 million per mile and get the construction done faster. I don't know why the costs are so out of control, but it seems likely that it will take at least another 70 years to really finish the Second Avenue Subway unless we can get the costs under control. And we wonder why our infrastructure is falling apart, yet we spend more on infrastructure than other first world countries - it isn't just a transit or NYC problem!

My sister was looking at a CX-5 and I liked it better than I thought I would. I believe the stick is no longer offered, or if it is, only on the lowest trims. I would much prefer a stick, but it would be a hard choice for me if I had to choose between a cheap stripper with a stick or getting a nicer trim with everything I wanted and an auto. Would probably partly depend on auto technology and execution since not all autos are created equal.

BMW also seems to not be taking the enthusiast market seriously anymore. Hard to find a new BMW with a stick today - yes, their highest performance models still have sticks available, but it used to be that you got performance anywhere in the lineup, and that no longer seems to be the case. I live in a high cost of living but also high traffic area. People can afford nice cars and there's a lot of enthusiasts around. I don't see as many BMWs as I used to. Ford performance models are very popular - I see almost as many Focus ST as any other trim level. I see more Fiesta ST than all other Fiesta.

VW puts nicer interiors in the same cars in Germany. Germans seeing a VW in the US are often completely confused by the lack of quality. I like some of the VW vehicles, especially their willingness to bring more euro style vehicles to the US, but overall am not impressed with their offerings. When they have competition, it seems like most of the other offerings execute better. That said, I had a Golf as a rental in Spain that had a much nicer interior than the US Golf - and it was a lower model. I wouldn't say the car was a joy to drive though since it had been in a major accident before me and I think the location was just trying to dump it on another location, since it was a one way rental.

I haven't used AM radio at all in either of my current cars or the car that came before them - purchased new in 2001. The last radio station I listened to on AM was the local "traffic and weather every 10 minutes" all news station. They were the last holdouts to moving to FM - they didn't have a usable FM signal until 1998. To me, AM is just noise when I accidentally push the wrong button. In my lifetime, I've never had more than 2 AM presets, and I haven't bothered setting any in over 15 years. I wouldn't miss it at all.

I don't get that sentiment - even if I'm happy with a brand, I always cross shop vehicles. Too big a purchase for something that I will keep a long time to not know the whole field. When I bought my Escape, my initial search for a new vehicle contained between 35 and 40 models. I got that down to around 5 fairly fast, but looked seriously at all of those options. I've been very happy with Ford and would start there if replacing a vehicle, but I'd give the competition in that class a serious look before buying. I think that someone who blindly buys Toyota today must not keep their vehicles very long. I've had several Toyotas as rentals recently and have been pleasantly surprised at how they drive, but every Toyota in the family in the past decade has not been well built and has required a lot of service. What a far cry from mid 90s Toyotas that were practically indestructible - I know several people driving old Camrys with 300k+ miles and no mechanical problems yet. We put an engine in a Corolla around the 5 year mark - 1 month out of powertrain warranty and well under on mileage for a coolant leak out of the block. Not the same kind of construction!

As someone who has packed many extended length conventional vans and also box trucks with production equipment (sound, lights, etc), I can tell you the legacy design full size vans are a pain to pack because of the low interior height. The Fords were the easiest to pack, but the difference between an E350 and a small box truck on an E350 cutaway chassis is night and day in terms of ease of packing for the same amount of gear. The box truck costs a lot more though. A high roof Euro van would probably work great for that in between space - where a van is large enough but a pain to load.

I will second the PCH - just expect it to take a long time to drive. There's so many beautiful spots, especially the section south of San Francisco near Monterey that I stopped every few turns to enjoy the view.

I rented a Renault Captur in 2014. It was a great little car and I'd happily rent it again. It felt much better built than the VW Golf I rented a week later.

@fordmantpw GM used to offer plant tours of their Baltimore Assembly plant (which closed in 2005). I did one of the tours around 2000 when they were building the Astro/Safari vans and it was one of the most interesting things I've ever done. The tour started around 7pm and lasted over two hours, with roughly two miles of walking during the tour. We saw most everything the plant did. No photos allowed, of course, but they did give us some UAW-themed swag at the end. I think I still have a UAW truck shaped ruler they gave us. I think the tour was free too - definitely not a customer perk as no one in my immediate family has ever owned a GM product, despite having owned many makes. I would have loved to have a similar tour of the Escape plant!

But the million dollar question: can you get the hatch with the diesel engine?

Wow - 90k on a bike is crazy! I thought my buddy's bike was really high at 41k compared to all the used ones I've been seeing. Never seen a listing for one for sale around here with over 60k - and I've only seen over 30k a few times.

As someone who has a commuter car and a SUV for hauling stuff and taking trips, I'd love the replacement for my commuter to be electric. I do want to own a manual transmission vehicle though, so my ideal would be having a Escape ST with a manual transmission and then a Focus electric or similar. If I had to replace my commuter with a new vehicle today, it would either be a Focus electric or a Focus ST. Of course, I usually keep cars 10-15 years and don't want my cars to need replacing at the same time so I would probably get another used one if I needed to replace in the next year or two.

Planning to get my motorcycle endorsement finished in January. The biggest downside to me finishing is that I will likely end up buying a bike then - and do I as a single guy really need three vehicles? Motorcycles can use HOV lanes here as long as they're HOV only and not HOT (high occupancy or pay a toll - motorcycles pay) but can't ride between lanes. My morning commute is usually free flowing except for a 1 mile backup at my exit. Evening is usually stop and go most of the way so does make me think twice about wanting to do it on a bike.

It makes me pay attention to what's happening instead of being distracted by other things in the car, phone, etc.

I actually prefer a manual in stop and go traffic. Got caught in a major backup in my Escape about three weeks ago and was bored out of my mind with the automatic. I mainly use the Escape on the highway, so it doesn't make any difference to me there. I do have to say that I am not sure if I would upgrade my clutch if I were doing the clutch replacement in my 3 again. The extra torque capacity is nice for spirited driving, but it is a lot heavier than the stock one when you're sitting in stop and go traffic. If I had to do stop and go traffic all day, I'd have a stick with a light clutch.

My best friend drives a tC. Personally, I think a lot of the car feels cheap, but it is more functional than most sedans because of the hatch. It doesn't surprise me that there are so few coupes left being made. The only kind of coupe I'd ever consider is a performance car, and even there I'd rather have a hatch or sedan. The Civic looks like it could be a hatch - don't know why they didn't do it right.

CR has never impressed me. They fit a need - supposedly unbiased reviews of products that are frequently not reviewed or not reviewed without major bias. They claim to be scientific, yet they won't release their methodology. The key to the scientific method is repeatable results and when CR has released methodology (or said enough that it could be figured out), it has generally been highly flawed or their results were not reproducable. See their famos oil study that proclaimed there was no difference between motor oils, which only used NYC taxis that were run 24/7 as test vehicles. Or how they calculate vehicle reliability (hint: Honda and Toyota openly cheat and aren't penalized). I would love to see something like CR except with released methodologies that could be reproduced by others to confirm the findings. I would happily pay for such a service. As it stands today, I'd just as soon read reviews from supposedly ordinary users off Amazon or other sites with reviews for consumer products instead of paying CR for tests that don't stand up to scrutiny.

I did my Escape last week. It was only about 6000 miles on Mobil 1, but it had been a year so the car asked for an oil change. I probably would have waited a little longer but I put nearly 1000 miles on it last weekend, so I wanted to have clean oil in it.

A lot of developing countries have no emission standards or safety standards and if they have them, they're not enforced at all. If WV has a hard time making these cars compliant and ends up cancelling diesel sales in the US, it wouldn't shock me if they shipped the unsold inventory to Latin America.

While it is looking more and more like Ford made the right decision to not build a small diesel, if they have a small diesel ready that performs over 30% better than the equivalent gas model that meets CA and US requirements without cheating, it could be the perfect time to introduce one on a model or two. VW has demonstrated that there is a decent number of Americans that want diesels and if this recall severely damages them (or at least their image here), it could create an opportunity for someone else to pick up the diesel slice of the market here.

The bigger question to me is will the government force owners to get them fixed. Some areas with emissions tests may blanket fail any cars that haven't been updated. It will be interesting to see how much performance drops with compliant programming. If it's not a huge amount, it won't cause issues. However, if it takes Jetta performance (much better than gas version) to Cruze performance (marginally better than gas version), I can see owners going out of their way to not do the recall. Reminds me of the recall on the 2nd generation Civic Hybrid. Numbers were initially much better than the gas version but the batteries were dying under warranty. Honda reprogrammed as a recall and the batteries stopped dying but the economy went down from a huge advantage over a conventional engine to only marginally better. One of my buddies bought one because it had a short payback period with his at the time long commute. After the reprogram, he wasn't doing much better than the gas model (1-2 mpg) and would have happily traded to have the extra trunk space and back seats that folded down to carry bigger things (single guy with one car). Car went from paying back the added cost in 2-3 years to not paying back over its expected life.

I've been watching my dreams of a diesel, manual wagon die over the last few days. While I am no fan of VW and would like to see emissions and safety standardized with Europe, it seems that the only way to get a good performing small diesel to meet current US standards is to cheat. Evidence is VW's share of the US diesel market - they sold well, but everything else that has tried to compete has been a dud (diesel Cruze) or hasn't actually reached the market (Skyactiv-D - repeatedly delayed for bad performance). It makes Ford's decision to stay out make a lot more sense.